Living the Questions

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign language. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I have spent the last six years of my life on a journey with no clear destination in sight – believe me, a most disconcerting place to be at best – all the while having doors closed to me in many improbable and, at times, rude ways. I have felt compelled to prepare myself … I have felt the continual nudging of the Holy Spirit, but with no true vision of the destination, just the continual (annoying) gentle, nudging, to stay on the path and to remain faithful to the journey, the process, the becoming.

Unlike, a pregnant woman, who holds on to the vision of the baby to be birthed at the end of the journey of her pregnancy, the vision of which makes the pregnancy enjoyable and discomforts bearable, for me, there has been no glimpse of the outcome, just a clear nudging to continue the journey which all logic says is crazy. No vision to sustain the discomforts. No vision to affirm the joys. No vision to confirm the path – just a nudging to continue, to be willing and open to the process of becoming.

becoming what …. just becoming… becoming when … just becoming …

becoming, becoming, BECOMING…

Living the questions, trusting the process, being open to the mystery of the journey of becoming – HOW? Peacefully, serenely, perhaps even in a saintly manner? Joyfully with abandon? NO – definitely not my reality!

Living the questions, trusting the process, being open to the mystery of the journey of becoming – HOW? Kicking and screaming all of the way. Railing against the system (at times against God). Until, like a child exhausted from all of the kicking and screaming of a good temper tantrum, falling into a heap on the floor, and allowing God to put His arms around me and to comfort me and, finally, in my weakness and exhaustion, opening myself to the mystery and finding myself simultaneously at one with it and at peace with it. (It’s easy to become at peace with something once all of the energy to fight it has been expended!)

Do I ‘love the questions’? … …Are you CRAZY?

Am I open to the process of becoming and to the mystery? … Yes, Lord, but please only for today!

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of you heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. (Eph 1: 17-18, NRSV)